Coffee Drinking Found to Lower Risk of All-Cause Mortality

TUESDAY, July 3, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Increased coffee intake may be a beneficial addition to a healthy diet, according to a study published online July 2 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Erikka Loftfield, Ph.D., from the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Md., and colleagues used baseline demographic, lifestyle, and genetic data from the U.K. Biobank cohort (498,134 participants; follow-up, 2006 through 2016) to estimate associations between coffee intake and mortality by genetic caffeine metabolism score.

The researchers found that coffee drinking was inversely associated with all-cause mortality. Compared to individuals who did not drink coffee, hazard ratios were 0.94 (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.88 to 1.01) for drinking less than one cup; 0.92 (95 percent CI, 0.87 to 0.97) for one cup; 0.88 (95 percent CI, 0.84 to 0.93) for two to three cups; 0.88 (95 percent CI, 0.83 to 0.93) for four to five cups; 0.84 (95 percent CI, 0.77 to 0.92) for six to seven cups; and 0.86 (95 percent CI, 0.77 to 0.95) for eight cups or more per day. Findings were similar for instant, ground, and decaffeinated coffee; across common causes of death; and irrespective of genetic caffeine metabolism score.

“These findings suggest the importance of noncaffeine constituents in the coffee-mortality association and provide further reassurance that coffee drinking can be a part of a healthy diet,” the authors write.